Update: this research has now been expanded and presented at a conference. See Voice impersonators use brain to 鈥榖ecome鈥� characters
Talk about getting under someone鈥檚 skin. Impressionists seem to use visual images to 鈥渂ecome鈥� the people they are imitating, according to a brain-scanning study that started as a public demonstration and is now being expanded.
, of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, asked impressionist Duncan Wisbey to lie in an fMRI brain scanner and repeat phrases in a variety of different voices 鈥� including the actor Cary Grant and the British TV chef Anthony Worrall Thompson.
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(Listen to Wisbey performing some of the impressions while in the scanner)
Other accents Wisbey impersonated included 鈥渂aleful Cockney鈥� and 鈥渢ired Australian鈥�. As a control, he repeated the same phrases in his own voice.
Visual imagery
When Wisbey was imitating others, there was higher activity in his parietal lobe, sensory motor strip and supplementary motor areas of the brain. These areas are respectively involved in visual imagery, body representation and vocalisation.
鈥淔or basic speech production, his results are normal,鈥� says Scott. 鈥淭he extra activities [when doing impressions] are in very plausible areas. These areas are known to be active in mental imagery tasks.鈥�
The results suggest that Wisbey uses visual images to imagine the people he is imitating, including their mannerisms, and these guide his impressions. This tallies with his own descriptions of how he does impressions.
For instance, to mimic , he says 鈥淸I create] a constriction of the neck, and I鈥檓 actually pushing the shoulders upwards and pushing my head down. My lower lip is protruding forwards, but I鈥檓 doing a sort of smile 鈥� just like the Joker from Batman.鈥�
(Listen to Wisbey discussing, in Anthony Worrall Thompson鈥檚 voice, how he imitates Anthony Worrall Thompson)
鈥楧istinctive results鈥�
Scott says working with an impressionist is a step forward because 鈥渋t gives us a chance to look at experts while they actually perform their skill鈥�.
Matt Davis, a speech and language researcher at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK, says the results are very interesting: 鈥淭he parietal activation they observe is quite distinctive.鈥�
However he says it is important to look at more than one impressionist, as they may be using different techniques: 鈥淚t might be that Wisbey achieves his skill in a distinctive way.鈥�
Obvious contrast
Scott is now recruiting other voice artists and impressionists to undergo the same procedure.
However, she says that the results from Wisbey are surprisingly clear-cut. 鈥淲e were all a bit taken aback,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 normally get much of an effect in a single-person imaging study.鈥�
Normally, researchers need to combine results from multiple subjects to eliminate noise and see a significant effect, but in this case the contrast was immediately obvious.
Scott and Wisbey will be presenting the results as on 11 March.
